Valve’s latest Steam Machine has become the center of the gaming industry’s attention. In addition to debates about the evolution of Steam, many have come forward to discuss the Steam Machine’s hardware configuration and how it will perform in current-gen games.

For context, the Steam Machine is set to launch with a 6-core, 12-thread Zen 4 CPU and an RDNA 3 GPU with 28 CUs. This configuration should offer comparable performance to the Radeon RX 7400, which many people consider underpowered for current-generation gaming. However, Valve claims that the Steam Machine is adequately equipped for modern games.

As per an engineer from the company, the Steam Machine is equal or better than 70% of PC gamers’ current configurations.

This statement comes from Valve engineer Yazan Aldehayyat, who states that Valve relied on the Steam Hardware Survey to analyze the type of PC builds gamers currently have access to. Looking at the data from the latest Steam Hardware Survey, the Steam Machine has an edge in the CPU department.

According to the survey, similar to the Steam Machine’s CPU, 28.69% of PC gamers rely on 6-core CPUs. On the other hand, the GeForce RTX 3060 remains the most popular GPU on the platform. For context, the Steam Machine’s GPU should be around 20% slower than the GeForce RTX 3060 based on performance estimates.

Still, with GPUs like the RTX 3050, GTX 1650, and GTX 1060 being quite relevant on Steam’s Hardware Survey, the Steam Machine does appear quite compelling as an offering for current-gen gaming. This is likely why Valve believes its hardware will outperform most of the current PC setups owned by mainstream gamers.

The Steam Machine is equal or better than 70% of what people have at home. – Yazan Aldehayyat

Steam Hardware Survey October 2025

The big question right now is how the Steam Machine will age once the next generation of games rolls around. Many have pointed out that it may not age too well, considering the PS6 and next-generation Xbox are just a few years away, so the future of Valve’s PC-console hybrid will be quite interesting to observe.

Nonetheless, as Yazan Aldehayyat points out, the Steam Machine should be a solid option for those interested in PC gaming next year.